The possibility of impossible stairways: Tail events and countable player sets

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Voorneveld, Mark
• 署名单位: Stockholm School of Economics; Tilburg University
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2009.07.009
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 403-410
• 关键词: Common-payoff games; Dominant strategies; Payoff-dominance; Nonexistence of equilibrium; Tail events

摘要

In classical game theory, players have finitely many actions and evaluate outcomes of mixed strategies using a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function. Allowing a larger, but countable, player set introduces phenomena that are impossible in finite games: Even if players have identical payoffs (no conflicts of interest), (I) this payoff may be minimized in dominant-strategy equilibria, and (2) games so alike that even the consequences of unilateral deviations are the same, may have disjoint sets of payoff-dominant equilibria. Moreover, a class of games without (pure or mixed) Nash equilibria is constructed. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.